The Gaza Record, October 18
A date when Jabalia was reduced to ashes, and Khan Yunis faced atrocity
By Dominick Skinner | 18 October 2025
We’ve seen so many atrocities in Gaza committed by Israel that they fade from memory. The Gaza Record is our attempt to bring these events under a fresh light as we look back each day on the crimes committed on that date. October 18 is remembered for the bodies pulled from rubble in Jabalia, for the hospital lights that went out the night before, and for a world that still pretended to see two sides to a massacre.
On October 18, 2023, Gaza was still reeling from the bombing of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital the night before, where hundreds had been killed in one of the most horrific single strikes of the war. In the early hours of the 18th, Israeli air raids continued across the Strip, hitting residential areas in Khan Younis, Rafah, and Deir el-Balah, killing at least 70 more people overnight, according to Arabic media. Al Jazeera Arabic reported that entire families had been wiped out in their homes and that hospitals were running without power as fuel ran dry. Gaza’s Health Ministry announced that the overall death toll had climbed to over 3,400, with thousands more trapped under the rubble.
The UN warned that Gaza had less than 24 hours of water, electricity, and fuel left, while Israel’s siege kept the borders sealed. Even as the world was still absorbing the images of Al-Ahli’s devastation, Israel continued its bombardment from the air, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee south on foot. At the same time, the U.S. announced that 20 aid trucks would be allowed through Rafah, an image of generosity that would never reach most of Gaza’s population. Those trucks became a talking point for Western media, while the bombing never stopped.
By October 18, 2024, the war had entered a deeper phase of destruction. Israeli airstrikes once again struck Jabalia refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas on earth. Several homes were hit in quick succession, collapsing onto families who had fled there months earlier. Medics reported at least 33 killed and 85 injured in the first count, with the final number rising as bodies were pulled from the debris. Al Jazeera Arabic called it “a massacre without pause.”
The attack came amid renewed evacuation orders for northern Gaza and a halt to food deliveries for anyone who stayed. Civilians were told to flee, yet every road south was already bombed. The result was a siege that forced people to choose between starvation and death by airstrike. By this point, Jabalia had been bombed so many times that it was no longer a camp, it was a crater with survivors living in its dust. Rescue workers spoke of hearing children calling from under the ruins, but heavy machinery couldn’t reach them because there was no fuel left to run it.
This was not a new phase of war. It was the same war with fewer witnesses and even less outrage. A year earlier, hospitals had burned; now schools and camps were being erased. International agencies described northern Gaza as “beyond collapse.” Every part of life, food, water, medicine, shelter, had been turned into a weapon.
October 18, 2023, was the aftermath of a hospital massacre. October 18, 2024, was the aftermath of a year of impunity. One year apart, the same sound filled the air: bombs, then silence, then the hum of generators as the living looked for the dead.
Each date carries the same message. There is no humanitarian corridor when every direction leads to rubble. There is no ceasefire when the siege never ends.
The world may want to forget, but Gaza cannot forget.
And for the rest of us, The Gaza Record remembers.